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Workforce Today Magazine A Publication for Businesses of Northwest Wisconsin
FALL 2008 |
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Welcome to Workforce Today Magazine!
Greetings!
Welcome to the autumn issue of the E-Workforce Today magazine. This issue examines ways employers can increase their employee retention rate and decrease their turnover costs. With the current labor shortage forecasted to only get worse it is an excellent time to start looking at strategies to retain your best and brightest workers!
Happy reading!
* If you wish to unsubscribe to this publication please use the link at the bottom of this page.
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More Tips to Reduce Employee Turnover
By Susan M. Heathfield
Competitive salary, competitive vacation and holidays, and tuition reimbursement are three basics in employee retention. Especially for millennial employees, these are the holy grail for recruitment and retention. But, employers can reduce employee turnover in many other ways. (If you think these read like the Golden Rule, you're right, they do.) Check out the turnover calculator by UW-Extension above to see how much your turnover costs!
Reducing employee turnover is dependant on the total work environment you offer for employees. These recommendations about reducing employee turnover are also common-sense, basic and incredibly hard to find in organizations today.
Select the right people in the first place through behavior-based testing and competency screening. The right person, in the right seat, on the right bus is the starting point.
At the same time, don't neglect to hire people with the innate talent, ability, and smarts to work in almost any position even if you don't currently have the "best" match available. Hire the smartest people you can find.
Offer an attractive, competitive, benefits package with components such as life insurance, disability insurance and flexible hours. I'll never forget a young employee whose stated reason for accepting our job offer was the availability of our 401(k). And, my research on millennials and money indicates that they do not want to repeat the mistakes of their parents. Better benefits = reduced employee turnover.
Demonstrate respect for employees at all times. Listen to them deeply; use their ideas; never ridicule or shame them. Via your communication, share that you value them.
Offer performance feedback and praise good efforts and results.
People want to enjoy their work. Make work fun. Engage and employ the special talents of each individual.
Enable employees to balance work and life. Allow flexible starting times, core business hours and flexible ending times. (Yes, his son's soccer game is as important as work.)
Involve employees in decisions that affect their jobs and the overall direction of the company whenever possible. Involve them in the discussion about company vision, mission, values, and goals. This strategic framework will never "live" for them or become "owned" by them if they merely read it in email or hanging on the wall.
Recognize excellent performance, and especially, link pay to performance.
Nurture and celebrate organization traditions. Have a costume party every Halloween. Run a food collection drive every November. Pick a monthly charity to help. Have an annual company dinner at a fancy hotel.
Provide the opportunity for career and personal growth through training and education, challenging assignments and more responsibility. People like to know that they have room for career movement.
Communicate goals, roles and responsibilities so people know what is expected and feel like part of the in-crowd.
According to research by the Gallup organization, encourage employees to have good, even best, friends, at work.
Now that you have the list, why not work to make your organization one of the few, the best, that truly honor and appreciate employees. If you treat your employees wonderfully, you will seriously reduce employee turnover.
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JULY 2008 Data for Wisconsin and the U.S.
Latest Numbers for Wisconsin and US.
Seasonally
Adjusted
Unemployment rate:
WI US
4.9% 5.7%
Civilian labor force:
WI US
3,069,500 154,603,000
Number employed:
WI US
2,918,400 145,819,000
Number unemployed:
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Center On Wisconsin Strategy Releases 2008 State of Wisconsin Working Report
Labor Day 2008 brings generally bad news for Wisconsin's workers, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy reports in its latest The State of Working Wisconsin 2008, a biennial report on how the state and its workers are faring. Among other findings of this year's report: * Wisconsin is losing jobs: 24,000 jobs since June 2007 * After growing consistently in the 1990s, the Wisconsin median wage, now $15.17/hr, has fallen in recent years, the first period of sustained decline since the early 1980s * Median four person Wisconsin family income has fallen nearly $6,000 since 2000, three times the national drop. To view the Executive Summary and full report please visit http://www.cows.org/soww/ |
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40 Years of Workforce Development Excellence!
Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development (DWD) Secretary Roberta Gassman highlighted the success of three individuals starting new careers as health care workers at Ashland Memorial Medical Center and honored Northwest CEP, Inc., for helping workers and employers in its 40 years of service to the area.
Secretary Gassman presented Steve Terry, Executive Director of Northwest CEP, Inc., a commendation congratulating the organization on its 40th anniversary. Affiliated with the Northwest Wisconsin Workforce Investment Board, CEP serves 180,000 people in the ten county region. | |
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Talent Profiling Systems: Why Use Assessments?
Reasons to use pre-employment assessments...
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Two of three new hires will disappoint in the first year
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Two of three employees would rather work somewhere else
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Ninety-five of 100 applicants will "exaggerate" to get a job
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Most hiring decisions are made in haste - during the first five minutes of an interview
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One of three businesses will be sued this year over an employment issue
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Turnover costs thousands of dollars for every departing employee
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Eighty percent of employee turnover is avoidable
AND...
You want employees who are dependable
In 1998, absenteeism cost employers $757 per employee, according to a report in USA TODAY. This was the direct cost reported by a survey of human resource professionals and does not include the cost of hiring others or paying overtime to perform the work of absent employees.
You can be held liable for employees' behavior on and off the job
You must know the nature of the people you hire because their criminal behavior could cost your business millions of dollars. Every time you hire without practicing due diligence, you may be accepting liability for their actions - even when they are "off the clock."
You can be sued for illegal discrimination
In the absence of objective data, how can you demonstrate a hiring/promotion decision was made objectively, without discrimination because of gender, race, religion, etc.
Résumé writers write great fiction
In a survey of recent college graduates, 95% said they would be willing to make a false statement in their résumés in order to get a job. Forty-one percent admitted they had already done so, according to a report in Nation's Business (May, 1999).
Testing is acceptable, even expected
As reported in Molding Systems (May, 1999, v57 i5 p56(1)), a survey found that 92% of job applicants accept testing as part of the job qualification process. Only 3% resent it, while 5% were neutral.
Assessments offer a solution
Historically, employers depend upon résumés, references and interviews as sources of information for making hiring decisions. In practice, these sources have proved inadequate for consistently selecting good employees. When training employees, a "one size fits all" approach has failed to provide the desired results. When selecting people for promotion, otherwise excellent employees have too often been miscast into roles they could not perform satisfactorily. Clearly, an essential ingredient for making "people decisions" has been missing from the formula. The use of assessments has become essential to employers who want to put the right people into jobs
provide employees with effective training
help their managers to become more effective
promote people into positions where they will succeed.
The use of assessments has resulted in extraordinary increases in productivity while reducing employee relations problems, employee turnover, stress, tension, conflict and overall human resources expenses.
Several factors contribute to the failure of traditional hiring methods. Résumés often contain false claims of education and experience while omitting information that would help employers make better hiring decisions.
Business references are of little value because most past-employers will tell you nothing but "name, rank and serial number."
These realities are the reason interviews have become the most influential factor in hiring and promotion decisions. However, experience shows only a coincidental correlation between the ability to deliver well in an interview and to deliver well on the job. Studies peg this correlation at 14% -- one good employee in every seven hires. Even background checks don't help much. The success rate becomes 26%, but that's only one good hire in every four. Unfortunately, many employers have accepted these poor results and the high cost of excessive turnover as a business reality. They have flown the white flag of surrender.
Don't Surrender! Assessments do help significantly
Assessing behavioral traits improved the hiring success rate to 38%. When both thinking abilities and behavioral traits are assessed, the right people are hired 54% of the time.
When an assessment of occupational interests is added, successful results improve to 66%. The most impressive results are achieved, however, when an integrated assessment is used - one that measures behavioral traits, thinking, occupational interests, plus "Job Match."
These integrated assessments employ cutting-edge technology and empirical data to assess the qualities of "The Total Person." In doing so, the individual qualities of candidates are compared to the qualities of employees who performing their duties in a superior manner. These 21st Century assessments successfully identify potentially excellent employees better than 75% of the time.
Job Match outranks all other factors
A well-documented study, published in Harvard Business Review concludes that "Job Match" is by far the most reliable predictor of effectiveness on the job. The study considered many factors including the age, sex, race, education and experience of approximately 300,000 subjects. It evaluated their job performance and found no significant statistical differences, except in the area of "Job Match." The conclusion: "It's not experience that counts or college degrees or other accepted factors; success hinges on a fit with the job."
The only reliable method for evaluating "Job Match" is with a properly designed assessment instrument, capable of measuring the essential job-related characteristics particular to each specific job. Profiles International has assessments designed for this purpose.
Printed with permission of Profiles International. |
Mari Kay-Nabozny
NWWIB, Inc. Director of Development & Oversight
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